


moving on

by thecrackshiplollipop



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-04 13:09:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4138791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecrackshiplollipop/pseuds/thecrackshiplollipop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peggy's helped save the world, again, but life doesn't get easier with victory. But she has Angie and, really, that's all that matters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	moving on

"Please don't stay there." Peggy's voice shakes as she holds onto tears she does not want to cry in front of Sousa. The office is already mostly empty and she really, really doesn’t have the time to be making this call, but she is anyway. Sousa gives her this look and she turns her back to him, phone pressed to her ear and tears slip out despite her best efforts. “ _Please_.” Dottie could still be there and the thought of her hurting Angie makes Peggy feel sick to her stomach. She wants to say something else, but the words don't come.

Angie knows Peggy can’t give her a reason, she doesn’t need one anyway. She just packs her things and leaves her key on Miriam's desk in the middle of the night, not even bothering to say goodbye to Gloria or Martha. It's not forever. Except, it might _feel_ like forever, since she has to stay with her folks for however many days while Peggy is off saving the world.

(Peggy tells her the truth later, but five days of church and pasta and 'when are you gonna find a husband?' has Angie's mind wondering at all of Peggy's impossible heroics; preventing another war, stopping spies, saving the world. The usual, rose-tinted stuff.

She isn’t totally wrong, actually.)

* * *

The car that picks her up in front of her childhood home sticks out like a sore thumb amongst the ramshackle tenements and beat up cars of East Harlem. A crowd of tan skinned, black haired boys hovers at a nearby stoop, gawping at the flashy lady that slides out of the back of the car.

" _English_ ," Angie breathes, relief coursing through her veins faster than blood, her whole body thrums with a radiant joy. She hadn't believed it when she'd received the call from Howard Stark's butler, but with Peggy standing in front of her in the flesh... her knees go a little weak and, for the first time in her life, she's at a loss for words.

"Oh god." Peggy is, truly, just as relieved as Angie, tension she hadn't known was there easing out of her shoulders. She suddenly feels much older and much more tired than she's ever been. "You're a sight for sore eyes." She smiles, her voice thick with affection, and motions at the car, holding the door open for Angie.

"Hey, Ange," the oldest kid, too brazen for a skinny twelve year old, leaps off of the stoop and eyes Peggy lewdly, "you in the biz now, too?"

"I bet your p-" Peggy looks affronted, hands going immediately to her hips.

"Alfonso Genovese, shouldn't you be in school?"

"Aw, Angie, c'mon-"

"I'll call your ma," Angie says sternly, furrowing her brows in her best impression of her own mother. She adds a finger wag for emphasis and Peggy has to cover her mouth to hold in a laugh.

"Sheesh," the boy shrugs his shoulders and punches the nearest kid in the shoulder, "let's go. She ain't nobody, anyway."

"But Alfie whaddabout _the car_ ," one of the boys whispers, earning a smack on the back of the head as they clear off of the stoop and head away from Peggy and Angie.

"Sorry," Angie says, feeling breathless with embarrassment, "the neighbourhood boys are thugs."

"You handled them well," Peggy says in a laugh. "We really should go, though." Peggy tilts her head towards the car's open door and steps back for Angie to get in. There are a million things Angie would rather do first - cry, scream, laugh, hug her, kiss her, breathe the smell of her in, thank God she's alive. Instead, she steps off of the stairs to her building, lets the fancy butler take her luggage, and tucks herself into the backseat of the nicest car she's ever been in. 

* * *

"It's not too lavish, is it?" Peggy means the bedroom. The house. All of it, really. They'd spent hours nosing out every secret place in Howard Stark's six-bedroom mansion and, exhausted, picked the two rooms closest to each other. Peggy's room is all warm dark reds and dark wood with a fireplace that hasn't been used since before Howard Stark owned the place. Angie's however, is pale blue with billowy curtains and a vase full of yellow flowers by the window. It's a breath of fresh air, just like Angie.

"Oh I don't think so." Angie says, bustling back and forth between her suitcase and her closet. Peggy is sitting in the middle of Angie's bed, watching her with tired amusement. "But you tell me, how does it compare to all those castles in England?" Angie tilts her head, putting one of her cream coloured slips onto a hanger.

"I wouldn't know," Peggy says with a laugh.

"Oh c'mon." Angie pauses on her way back to her suitcase, hand on hip, brows raised like she doesn't believe Peggy at all.

"No really," Peggy shakes her head, "I'm just the average daughter of an average, working class family."

"Tch," Angie scoffs and shakes her head, "nothin's average about you, English." Angie says it with such surety in its truth that it makes Peggy's stomach flip flop. The deep, unnameable way she feels about Angie reminds her so strongly of Steve it takes her off guard. She has to remind herself of her words to Howard, we have to move on, all of us, and pushes the image of Steve Rogers away. There's this aching in Peggy's heart that is always there, just beneath the surface no matter how hard she pushes, and all she wants is for the fluttering in her stomach to be about Angie, with her kind eyes and smart mouth. When Angie smiles at her, there seems to be less emptiness to fill in, and perhaps a lot more life to live.

"Angie?" Peggy says after a long pause.

"Yeah?" She says from somewhere within the closet.

"Do you think I could... stay here tonight?"

"What," Angie pops her head out of the doorway, "like, share the bed?"

"I just don't think I can bear to be alone right now." Her room is just across the hall from Angie's but it feels too great a distance when all Peggy needs is the reassurance that she is not, and will never truly be, alone. Otherwise, the emptiness might just swallow her up.

"Oh, Peggy," Angie says, her voice gone soft and sweet. She walks across the room so she's standing at the foot of the bed and leans on the foot board. "Of course you can sleep here."

"Thank you," Peggy sighs, tension sliding out of her limbs and leaving her shaky with relief. She has days to deal with work and Dottie missing and the emotional baggage that she has yet to unpack in regards to Chief Dooley's death. For now, she allows herself the reprieve to be at ease, to be comfortable and safe, settling back onto Angie's pillows whilst Angie resumes unpacking her bags. For now, she has Angie, the rest of the world can wait.

 


End file.
